


The All-Nighter

by INMH



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Mild Sexual Content, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 22:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the Les Miserables Kink Meme. Prompt: Combeferre + Joly. Med students know that pre-exam cram sessions start to get a little bit wacky after 2:00 in the morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The All-Nighter

**Author's Note:**

> [Link to the Les Miserables Kink Meme](http://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/11823.html)

It was two in the morning, and they weren’t even halfway done.

“All right,” Combeferre muttered, head propped up against his fist. He’d placed himself in a rather uncomfortable chair deliberately so that he would be less likely to fall asleep. “Name the four humors.”

Joly stared blankly at the ceiling. “Uh…”

“Think colors.” Combeferre prompted. It occurred to him that eight hours of sleep would have had Joly regurgitating the information as easily as he could name the colors of the rainbow. But such was the nature of late-night cram sessions.

“Uh… Black bile. Yellow- no, red bile.”

“Either is acceptable.”

“Fucking ancient doctors with their inability to stay consistent with their fucking colors.” There was literally no venom in Joly’s voice, despite the harsh words. An entire case of caffeinated soda (each) in less than twelve hours did that to you. “Blood and phlegm. Four. That’s four, right?”

Combeferre had to stop and count, his own mind moving with pathetic sluggishness. “Black-red-blood-phlegm… Yes. Four. Next question-”

“Can you die from this?” Joly asked, and the way he waved his hand vaguely could have easily suggested that he was asking if a person could die from air.

“From…?”

“Caffeine? Staying up for twenty hours straight and then planning to stay up for eight more to take an exam? Lying with a book pressing pretty hard into your spine?”

Combeferre shut the book for a moment, keeping the place with his thumb and bringing his free hand up to rub his eyes. “Caffeine is dangerous in large amounts. I would say that drinking anymore would not do us any kindnesses.” That was the light way of putting it; in reality, they had bypassed their safe caffeine limit about seven hours ago. “Excessive caffeine indigestion- Ingestion, I mean- can lead to death, much like an overabundance of anything.”

“So, stay up and study or die? What are we supposed to do?”

Combeferre yawned. “I suppose it depends on your priorities: Is death preferable to failing a History of Medicine exam?”

There was a pause.

“Yes,” They both said, in almost perfect synchronicity.

“Sleep deprivation can’t directly kill you, I drink. _Think_.” Combeferre shook his head sharply. “Only indirectly, through things like accidents caused by drowsiness and indetention.”

“Inattention?” Joly corrected lightly, and Combeferre nodded tiredly.

“Yes, that.”

“And the spine-thing?”

“Move the book.” There were a few ways that came to mind that a person could possibly die from having their spine pressed on for too long, but they were also highly unlikely- not that that would stop Joly from becoming even more paranoid about his health than he already was.

“Can’t. I think the caffeine did something to my muscles.” Joly had been lying on the floor for the past hour and a half, staring up at the ceiling. Combeferre suspected that he was resting his head on the floor for the same purpose that Combeferre had chosen to occupy the chair- it was uncomfortable, and would keep him awake. And then, rather randomly, Joly said, “I’m hungry.”

That made sense, because neither man had left Combeferre’s room for anything but bathroom breaks all day. They had had the cases of soda and some crackers and peanut-butter, but found that the combination was not exactly an effective one for sustaining them over a sixteen-hour cram period for their various exams.

Their fellows, likely fearful of what lay within, had been hesitant to notify either of them about dinner. Marius had been kind enough to crack open the door around six o’ clock and ask if they were hungry, but that had been well after a substantial amount of caffeinated drinks had been imbibed and poor Marius had been forced to bear witness to Joly’s dramatic reading of a physician’s 14th-century description of human organs and their purposes. Marius had taken Joly’s vibrant behavior and ghastly butchering of an Italian accent (The physician was from Florence) as a refusal to break for dinner and shut the door quickly. Combeferre could recall the man’s footsteps all but charging down the staircase.

“So am I. We’ll go for a few more questions and then break for some food.”

They wouldn’t. They had said that same thing four times in the past six hours, and it just didn’t happen.

Contrary to his previous assertion, Joly stretched his arms above his head and grimaced. “All right. Continue.”

“Name the three forms of _Yersinia pestis_.”

As Combeferre watched Joly’s fingers twitch, he considered that they would both need to cut caffeine completely out of their diets for at least three weeks to avoid doing anymore damage to their bodies than they had already done. It was midterm-season, and everyone had been overindulging in Red Bull, coffee and soda for the past week, but he and Joly were two of the biggest offenders. The drawback to being a medical student was that they both knew exactly what kind of things so much sugar and caffeine were doing to their bodies, but unable to force themselves to stay awake to study otherwise.

“The kind that screws up your lungs.”

“Which is…?” Joly didn’t answer. “There’s another disease with its name?”

“Bronchial?”

“No.”

“…Pneumonic.”

“Yes. One down.”

“Two.”

“No, bronchial isn’t one of them.”

“Right, right, right.” Joly nodded. “Right. Sorry. Uh… The kind that screws with your stomach.”

“Right.”

“And… Tell me.”

Combeferre sighed. “It’s the most obvious one.”

“It’s now two-thirty, Combeferre, nothing is obvious anymore.”

“What was the name of the plague that hit Europe in the fourteenth century?”

Joly blinked. “The Black Death?”

“No.”

“The Black Plague?”

“Close.”

“The… Oh, right, bubonic plague.”  
  
“ _Yes_.” Combeferre let the book flip shut again and let his head loll onto the back of the chair, grimacing when it dug into the base of his skull uncomfortably.

“The hell with dying, I think we’re going insane.” Joly muttered, raising one hand and tracing mindless patterns in the air.

“That is a strong possibility.”

“I want to go to bed and snuggle Bossuet. He’s very soft. And squishy, like a pillow.” He paused. “…Did I just say that out loud?”

“Yes.”

“Damn it.”

“Don’t worry about it- that’s tame compared to the fact that I walked in on Bahorel, Courfeyrac and Éponine playing doctor last week.”

For the first time in about three hours, Joly showed some signs of actual awareness and lifted his head off of the floor so that he could look at Combeferre directly. “You did?” When Combeferre nodded, he let out a huff of a chuckle. “What did you do?”

Combeferre shrugged, but was smiling slightly on the inside. “I pointed out the several hospital code violations and reminded them that there were condoms in the bathroom if they needed any.”

Joly giggled into his hands, rolling onto his side and shaking his head. “Oh God. That’s both hilarious in theory and terrifying as a mental image.” The energy eventually died, and Joly went limp again. If his eyes weren’t open, Combeferre might have thought that the other man had fallen asleep.

Normally Combeferre was a very determined young man who refused to fail at the things he _needed_ to do, but despite the fact that they had so much more to study for, they couldn’t go on like this. “All right, we’re done.”

“Hm?” After sixteen (and a half) hours, it was understandable that Joly would be confused at the idea of it all being over.

“Go.” Combeferre waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the door. Now that he had relinquished his intense desire to stay awake, his brain was rapidly starting to shut down. “Go squish Bossuet. We’ll… We’ll figure something out later on. Go.”

Joly blinked uncomprehendingly for a moment, but then nodded. “Oh. Okay. I’m going now.” He then proceeded to roll onto his stomach and start crawling towards the door.

Combeferre fell asleep before he even got there.  


-End

**Author's Note:**

> Courfeyrac/Éponine/Bahorel. I will make this a pairing. I will.


End file.
